Routers in existing IP networks do not currently accommodate the reserving of bandwidth for traffic management purposes. Accordingly, a router has no up-to-date notion of what is occurring with its associated endpoints in terms of accepting new traffic. For instance, once certain VoIP traffic has been admitted, there is no easy way for the router to determine that the specific traffic is no longer continuing. Thus, packets are typically dropped if the router cannot handle the associated traffic. One possible solution to address this problem is to associate timers to the specific traffic for each connection on each of the links and monitor each call for activity. Such a methodology is extremely costly, however, in that multiple timers must be programmed into each router and tracked. Accordingly, there is a need for a simplified traffic management methodology for routers in IP networks.